


Take Me Home (Home Where I Belong)

by th_esaurus



Category: Actor RPF, Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Domestic, Illustrated, M/M, Misunderstandings, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-05 17:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12799161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: This can’t last.He’ll adore it while it does, sure. But it can’t last.





	Take Me Home (Home Where I Belong)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sears](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sears/gifts).



> a lot of people let me throw this at them while i wrote it. to my very own liz, your support always means the world to me. tatti, your artwork makes this ten times more than what it is.
> 
> thank you all so much.

****

  **i.**

There’s a long stretch of weeks, over the easy Californian summer, where Timothée accidentally moves in with the Hammers.

It really is an accident. He brings with him a weekend bag and a spring jacket, a fold-up toothbrush he grabbed at Burbank, and a script he wasn’t supposed to take out of New York City, according to his NDA; but it’s just a few days, he reasons. A hastily-accepted invitation to spend an unspecified amount of time with Armie and his family just outside Los Feliz: that sparkling Hollywood mansion, three floors, two reception rooms, open-plan kitchen. A world away from Timothée’s untidy apartment in his dirty city.

He’s never felt unwelcome there for a second.

Timothée takes off his boots before he even steps across the threshold. “ _Thank_ you,” Elizabeth says, pointedly, as though he’s proved something to her uncouth husband.

“‘The colour of our carpets is white, white, white,’” Armie mutters, rolling his eyes and grinning. There’s a joke somewhere in his voice that Timothée doesn’t quite get, because their carpets are mostly beige.

He pulls Timothée into a single-armed hug and, without missing a beat, brushes back an errant curl over Timothée’s forehead and presses a wide kiss against his cheekbone.

Elizabeth smiles. “Let me take your bag, Timmy,” she says, gentler than she needs to be.

Everything about Elizabeth and Armie is somehow more accommodating and generous than Timothée thinks he deserves.

“Hungry?” Armie asks, without taking his arm off Timothée’s shoulder.

“Starving,” he admits.

“There’s blondies in the oven.”

“Your handiwork?” Timothée teases. Armie barbecues; never bakes.

“Harper played sous chef for me,” Elizabeth tells him, laughter in her eyes and just a hint of Texas in her twang.

Timothée has always been a city boy. Even summers in southern, small-town France never changed that. He wants everything within walking distance, his friends all sequestered in the same apartment block, every drive to be stop-start at a hundred intersections; steaming manhole covers, red fire hydrants, and even the suburbs packed in tight rows of brownstones, four stories high. The sprawl of rich-kid Los Angeles is foreign to him. He can’t fathom why anyone needs so much space, or how a city can have spread outwards, an urban ooze, rather than up, Babel-esque, in a perpetual race against the ever-rising haze.

“I love the way you talk about New York,” Armie told him once. “Like it’s the only place in the world.”

“Isn’t it?” Timothée had shrugged, and Armie’s laugh was fond and gentle.

So he has little love for Los Angeles. Doesn’t know enough about its weak underbelly to feel any great empathy for it, not out here where a trip to the grocery store takes them past Scientology’s absurd castle, and the Hollywood sign, Playboy sponsored, looms down over the local dog park.

But Armie’s home right now smells like childhood, just like when Timothée’s father used to teach his mom how to knead and prove and bake fresh brioche. Armie’s smile has the same vivid sincerity as the first time Timothée met him, the one that made him forget every word of Italian he’d just memorised. Armie’s dog bounds into the kitchen and snuffles curiously at Timothée’s fingertips, his nose wet against Timothée’s thumb. There is a recent photo, in a white frame on the kitchen counter, next to the ceramic jars of flour, sugar, spelt and cocoa, of little Harper curled up fast asleep around even littler Ford, both of them laid on a calm ocean of ivory cotton.

“You want one or two?” Elizabeth asks, offering him a plate of still-hot blondies and smacking Armie’s hand away when he tries to take first dibs.

“Anything,” Timothée answers, because that’s exactly how he feels.

He’ll take just about anything Armie and Elizabeth are kind enough to give him.

*

Days turn very rapidly into weeks.

Perhaps Timothée doesn’t quite notice, because time loses all sense of urgency. It’s not that he’s ever bored; there is always something to do.

Elizabeth plays stand-in for both of them as they read lines - she prefers Armie’s Ginsburg script, she says with her lips pursed, but is happy to play at Timothée’s NYC college girls as well - and in return, the boys help her scrapbook printed articles and newspaper clippings about Bird, then read her long lists of takings and receipts that she taps into her old-school calculator, jots in her leather-bound logbook. Armie unearths a terrible, terribly old school video of Timothée rapping about statistics and goads him gleefully into spinning two awful verses about Bird’s financial accounts, before his cheeks go pink with embarrassment and he’s forced to bury his face in Armie’s chest in shame.

There is almost always something cooking in the kitchen each morning. Armie makes breakfast, unless it’s pancakes: Elizabeth’s forte. Most often he’ll fry up bacon and eggs with oozingly golden yolks, warming up the remnants of yesterday’s fresh loaf for slopping up the leftover smears. They’ve a huge glass jar of homemade granola that Armie knows to scatter thin on a baking sheet and heat up in the oven for ten minutes before heaping generous spoonfuls on Greek yoghurt. It’s not the help-yourself attitude of Luca’s Italian mornings, but Timothée likes the lack of consultation: you get what you’re given. It’s always delicious, and the breakfast table veers between bright conversation and moments of satiated silence, just mouths chewing, plates being cleared.

Harper gets fixated on Timothée’s off-hand mention one morning that he’s never set foot in the Hammer Museum, and doesn’t drop the subject until Armie scoops them all into the car, Ford too, and takes them down for a day trip. Timothée’s tastes run closer to Basquiat and Keith Haring than academic art, but Harper grabs his hand and runs him around the galleries, near empty on a midweek afternoon, pointing at all her favourites and commenting, her head slightly tilted, on how funny it is so many of them are called _un-ti-tled._

Her little ballerina shoes clip-clop along the echoing floor as she dashes from room to room, calling for him: _Timmy! Tim, Tim, come look!_

Armie catches up with them slowly, happy to watch from three feet back, whispering, softly conspiratorial, with Elizabeth.

“Funny how it’s got your name,” Timothée says, when they stop for juice and coffee. “The building, I mean. Is that why you come?”

Elizabeth covers her smile with her hand, and Armie laughs, a little incredulous. “You’re an idiot. It’s my grandpa’s.”

“What?”

“You know. From the obnoxiously rich oil baron side of the family?”

“I didn’t know,” Timothée murmurs, embarrassed.

“I love that you didn’t know. Why should you?”

Timothée doesn’t say _because I’m your boyfriend._ He avoids that turn of phrase, where he can. Despite the apparent truth of it.

He doesn’t know if it’s crossing a line.

Most nights Timothée sleeps in the guest room, but that’s a practicality more than anything. He and Armie are both six foot plus, and neither of them dainty bedfellows. Armie sleeps with his wife, of course - of _course_ \- the first night, and Timothée figures, out of awkward politeness and an assumption that this is a short trip, that that’s just how things will go.

The second night, he brushes his teeth and musses his hair in the chic grey en-suite, then pads back into the bedroom to find Armie casually stripping down on the edge of the bed.

“Oh,” Timothée says. “Uh--”

“Your turn,” Armie tells him simply, beaming.

“It’s okay?”

Armie rolls his eyes, and then nods, earnest. “It’s okay.”

Sometimes--

Sometimes, when they’ve stayed up long past midnight watching ESPN, Elizabeth in her silk pyjamas with a rare, un-made-up face and a tall glass of red wine, Armie in his sweatpants and no tee, a comfort in his own skin that he learnt in Crema and decided not to shake, and Timothée, boxers and a hoodie that stretches down to his fingertips, as though he and Armie are sharing two halves of one casual outfit. His head in Armie’s lap and his feet resting against Elizabeth’s thigh--

It doesn’t feel right to part at the top of the stairs. Armie doesn’t let go of Timothée’s hand, just tugs him easily into the master bedroom.

“Only if--” Timothée starts, and Armie growls in frustration, amused, and tells him: “Stop asking. Start assuming.”

“I hope you don’t snore too, Timmy,” Elizabeth says casually, climbing under the sheets.

“ _Too?_ Rude,” Armie scoffs, tugging at Timothée’s hoodie until he lifts his arms, lets himself be laid bare.

“He’s--” Timothée starts, then stops himself lest he get a mouthful of fabric. “He’s the worst at like, 4am, right?”

“Oh, tell me about it. You’ve only had to put up with it a few months; I’ve had it for _years_.”

“I’m right here, you absolute assholes,” Armie says, and he doesn’t sound annoyed in the slightest. He sounds overjoyed. His big hands linger on Timothée’s jaw, wide, warm palms and long fingers. Timothée can’t help but grin, when Armie’s this close.

“Liz,” Armie says softly, without looking away from Timothée’s lips. “Liz, can I kiss him?”

“Yes, darling,” Elizabeth replies, fond and a little mocking.

“Well, if Liz says it’s okay,” Timothée manages, trying to keep up with their gentle fun.

Armie’s mouth on his is--as familiar as ever.

*

Two weeks into his rapidly extending stay, and Timothée comes back from a coffee run to find, on his bed, two new pairs of Levi’s and a far too large gift bag from Madewell: plain tees, a week’s worth of boxers, and a patterned jacket, just his style, with the price tag conspicuously snipped off.

He writes and deletes four separate texts to Armie about how unnecessary this is.

The one he sends just says: _And no shoes? Dude._

A minute later, as though Armie had been waiting: _your mom is fedexxing your white chucks over. who the fuck wears brand new converse._

Timothée huffs out a laugh. He presses the top of his phone to his bottom lip, and then closes his eyes, just for a moment. Tosses the phone down onto the pillow. He can hear it pinging, muffled, Armie’s follow-up jokes, but he doesn’t look. Not yet.

He has the house to himself for an hour or two. Armie with his agent, working out the fine details of his shoot in Montreal, shoe-horned in before their promo tour begins in earnest; Elizabeth out for a taste testing with one of Bird’s suppliers, Harper and Ford in tow. Even empty, their house seems full of life. Two shirts left out on the bed, where Armie couldn’t quite decide that morning. His copy of _Hard Choices_ , two thirds read and abandoned in a fit of political despair, gathering dust on the sideboard at the top of the stairs. The lid of the upright piano, nestling in a hallway nook downstairs, left up from Timothée’s impromptu lesson with Harper; teaching her, haltingly, the first few bars of Bach’s _Capriccio in E Major_. Last night’s bottle of wine in the kitchen, stoppered but left neglectfully out of the fridge; a freshly opened bag of pistachios, for Timothée’s light fingers.

Subtler clues linger as well. There’s a patch of mussy carpet on the stairs where, two days ago, he and Armie had given up aiming for the bedroom. Armie had yanked down Timothée’s jeans and blown him right there, the front door barely closed behind them. If he were to rifle through the bedside drawers in Armie and Elizabeth’s room, he knows he’d find lube and condoms; embarrassingly enough, two sizes of the latter. “Don’t beat yourself up,” Elizabeth had consoled him. “Most other men are merely _endowed_ next to our mutual friend.”

Timothée wanders through the kitchen, and out into the garden. A distinctly LA luxury, he feels. Cropped green grass, herbs growing in the soily borders; a terraced patio, rattan sofas and a fire pit. In the middle of the garden there’s a swing set, freshly planted by Armie’s own hand. They used to have a single swing, he told Timothée. But after Ford was born they duly earthed it up and replaced it with a two-seater.

“A family man,” Timothée murmurs to himself. He never much considered that phrase before he met Armie. He knows _families,_ of course, friends of his mother, childhood babysitters grown up ten years ahead of him, coworkers and agents, a side-effect of being young in an industry where everyone seems to be twice as experienced. But it was always husbands, wives, sons and daughters, units of identity; nobody ever seemed to suit the word _family_ as much as Armie and his.

Timothée feels ungainly, pale and easily-burned out here in the California sun. An interloper. The thought worms its way into the marrow of Timothée’s bones and rests there, one eye open.

This can’t last.

He’ll adore it while it does, sure. But it can’t last.

*

Timothée likes when they talk shop in bed. That casual intimacy of murmuring about what’s coming up in the diary, deciphering a line in a screenplay that doesn’t quite make sense, pondering what’s for lunch tomorrow; even a simple _how was your day?_ while Armie’s heavy thigh lies between his legs, just nudging his soft, spent cock.

He likes it, usually, because there’s never any real timescale to their plans. Just day by day.

“I gotta go to Montreal next week,” Armie murmurs tonight. His mouth is almost always near Timothée’s neck, his breath evening-warm. “Monday.” Not even a week. Four days from now.

“Right,” Timothée says, shifting a little against him. Armie’s palm slides easily down his back to press at the curve of his spine, spooning them closer together, chest to chest. “Right. I guess I’ll--”

“You can stay here if you--”

“No,” Timothée shakes his head minutely. “No, I should head back anyway. I’m s’posed to be in pre-production.”

“Don’t want to get a reputation,” Armie grins.

“Hmm?”

“Late. Lazy.”

“Unprofessional. Right.”

They lapse into silence again. The faint nighttime sounds of the house: Elizabeth’s heavy, sleeping breath, Archie padding from room to room, searching for someone awake to pay him attention, Harper tossing and turning, never managing to decide, in her sleep, whether she wants to be under or on top of her duvet. Timothée has tucked her back in more than once by now. Closer, intimate sounds too: Armie’s breath, slowed but not asleep, the rustle of Timothée’s hair, getting long, between his ear and the pillow.

“Liz is going to Dallas Sunday morning,” Armie murmurs quietly, not quite offhand. “You should go with her. Fly back home from DFW.”

“Baking business?” It’s a dumb joke they all share. Cookie consulting. Frosting finances. Cupcake capital.

Armie huffs a soft laugh against the underside of his chin. It’s ticklish and dangerously close. Timothée never felt this wrapped up with someone before, not with past girlfriends (three) or boyfriends (one, ill-defined), and shockingly not even with Armie until these past few weeks in Los Feliz. He was a gentleman in Italy, touching strictly within the bounds of research and rehearsal, as lame as that sounds in hindsight. It might have ended up as nothing more than a mutual crush, a heady attraction borne of circumstance and proximity that Timothée would look back on in ten years time and think _oh, well, of course_ \--

But Armie had called him two weeks after they wrapped, trying to sound light and all the more ominous for it. “Look,” he’d sighed eventually. “Look, stop me if I’m way off base with this, but--I really fucking like you, Timmy. I might even be pig-headed enough to think you like me as well.”

Timothée hadn’t stopped him.

“I spoke--I spoke to Liz about it. Don’t freak out, I don’t mean it like that. She’s--she adores you. She’s--Christ, Timothée, I’m just gonna lay it out like this and see if you ever talk to me again, or if you--”

“So lay it out,” Timothée breathed.

“Right. How do you feel about maybe, you know, dating? Just. Seeing where that goes.”

“You--you’re married.”

“As we’ve established, yeah.”

Timothée remembers how sweaty he was, his ear pressed against the phone, leaving marks. “I want--” He swallowed, licked his bottom lip. Peeling from an early autumn chill. He felt lanky, dank, in need of a shave. Deeply awkward, hopelessly unattractive. “I do like you,” he managed. “So much. But I don’t know if--”

“Try not to think about it logistically,” Armie had said, a little desperate.

They’d just spent two months living a movie about giving yourself permission to bare your soul, and Timothée was still stammering.

“Okay,” he managed, very quietly. It seemed absurd, and he was utterly, completely serious. “Okay. Let’s--we can--try.”

“Fuck,” Armie whispered down the phone, three thousand miles away. But he was smiling. Timothée could tell. He knew Armie by now.

Suffice to say, they gave it a shot.

“Baking business,” Armie agrees. “She wants you to tag along.”

“Sure,” Timothée scoffs, and Armie kisses the sarcasm off of his lips.

“Sure,” he says, rolling onto his back and pulling Timothée gently on top of him. It’s late, and they should sleep; but they spend a languid near-hour kissing until Timothée’s mouth feels numb and Armie’s departure, four days away, is half forgotten under the slip of his warm tongue.

*

They eat at Cento’s, downtown, a bustling Saturday night, and it feels like a goodbye. Armie’s boisterous, crowing about how the linguini is almost-- _almost!--_ as good as Speranza’s. “The arrancinni,” he says in a loud whisper, leaning into Elizabeth’s ear, “might be better. But don’t tell the chef, it’ll go to his head.”

It’s just the three of them - the babysitter only a phone call away - out later and far drunker than they usually allow. Armie talks with his hands on the best of days, but he’s gesticulating like a mime tonight, telling stories back and forth between Elizabeth and Timothée, filling in the gaps in their collective memory, blurry and joyful: Japan, for their anniversary, the sake that rendered them almost immobile; the crumbling castle at Sirmione, skinny dipping in Lake Garda at Luca’s sly insistence; the boat trip Liz took him on, where Armie brought three bottles of wine to share and ended up putting all of them back into the cellar afterwards, once she’d told him they were having a second child.

He clutches Elizabeth’s palm, and rests his arm mildly around Timothée’s shoulder. None of them can decide on dessert, so they order three and graze, sharing spoons. Wine, more wine, sweet Vin Santo, crumbly biscotti, dithering laughter about espresso this late at night, and Timothée can feel a tired, creeping fear wending through his veins that always comes when he’s drunk, as though his already-fragile confidence is even more syrupy and hard to grasp. Armie and Elizabeth are both bright and tipsy, matching laughter, Hollywood smiles. Wedding bands, both of them, on their ring fingers.

Armie’s smile stays just as wide when he turns it to Timothée.

“Let’s go home,” he says, knowing exactly what Timothée needs.

They catch an Uber, too stumbling to walk anywhere further than the street corner and Elizabeth barely managing her five-inch heels, and Timothée finds himself bustled gently into the middle of the backseat, between the two of them. “No,” he protests, “No, I’ll sit up front--” but Armie hushes him, laughing, and grips his hand as they drive, Timothée’s tired head lolling onto his shoulder. Elizabeth rubs his leg, comforting. He can smell Armie’s cologne, here at the base of his neck, and, brave or idiotic, Timothée puts out his tongue-tip, not quite licking, just a touch against Armie’s skin, where his top two buttons are undone.

“Sorry,” he murmurs. Their driver flips on his signal, though the roads are almost empty.

They’re not alone. Jesus.

“Not sorry,” Armie whispers back. He tilts Timothée’s chin up, his breath molasses-sweet, and kisses him. Not gently, either: already the push of his tongue into Timothée’s open mouth. They’re not quiet, too drunk to self-censor. Elizabeth’s hand brushes from his knee to the top of his thigh. It’s not a warning, and Timothée’s terrified, even now, to call it encouragement.

When they part, it’s with that unmistakable breathless lip-smack: the ending noise of a heady kiss.

The driver drops them almost exactly at the end of the driveway, and Armie tips generously in cash.

“I’m sorry,” Timothée keeps saying. “I’m sorry, that was--dumb, fuck, I’m--”

“Don’t be,” Armie murmurs, so mildly. He’s still holding Timothée’s hand. Elizabeth’s palm against the small of his back. Keeping him grounded; keeping him upright. “You don’t need to beat yourself up about this.”

“Come to bed, darlings,” Elizabeth says, beautifully soft.

What else can Timothée do but go? What else can he do, he thinks, but climb higher and higher beside them and hope, desperately, that when Armie and Elizabeth let him go, the fall doesn’t break too many bones?

*

Armie keeps them all in bed long past due. Morning make-outs instead of breakfast, giddy and boyish. Timothée doesn’t think he could eat regardless, and he blames it on his wine hangover, always more vicious than beer or spirits. Eighty percent, he decides; the twisting in his gut is at least eighty percent hangover.

“Hey,” Armie says softly, his fingers tripping over Timothée’s jaw and chin, brushing his weak stubble. “I’m gonna see you soon, okay?”

Toronto. New York, London; they’ll be together, on and off, for weeks.

“It’ll give you a chance to miss me,” Armie tells him, grinning bittersweetly, and their mouths meet again, tender, almost chaste. Elizabeth shifts, brushing against his back, still mostly asleep.

“I will miss you,” Timothée murmurs, so quietly he isn’t even sure if Armie hears him. So quietly he isn’t even sure if he says it at all.

No time to eat. Timothée takes only what he brought with him, the rest of his clothes stowed neatly in a drawer in the guest room, for next time, whenever next time might come.

He feels sick in the car to the airport, sick trudging through security, sick as he sits by Elizabeth’s side, waiting to take off. He slips in his earbuds - glancing at Elizabeth to make sure he’s not impolite, though she nods kindly - and listens to Bicep, Caribou, music that he doesn’t have to think about. He closes his eyes, and doesn’t watch as Armie’s city becomes blotchy beneath the clouds, indistinct, and then, altogether, vanished.

Timothée must drift to sleep, out of a wilful blankness more than any great fatigue, because he’s slumped, when he opens his eyes, against Elizabeth’s shoulder. His instinct is to peel himself back, apologise, but her arm is a warm weight around the back of his neck. Her long fingernails, pleasantly scratchy, playing with his outgrown hair.

Silence has never been uncomfortable between them. They talk often, brightly, swap music and movies, trade tales of life with Armie, though Elizabeth has a far more colourful back catalogue to pluck stories from. She’s known Armie since he was a teenager, Timothée comes to learn, and he loves her stories of Armie’s boy-band haircut, mismatched girlfriends, food poisoning after badly cooked steaks, oversharing during ill-advised highs. She tells him, in more detail than he feels he’s earned, of Armie’s selfish wooing of her, a woman spoken for, at the time, and how desperately he told her that he knew, he knew, he _knew_ they would marry.

Timothée thinks about that now, with her fingers playing over the nape of his neck.

“Don’t be sad, Timothée,” she says, low and gentle.

“I’m obvious,” he admits, half an apology.

“And I’m astute,” she replies breezily. He can feel her eyes on him, not judgemental but persistent. Watching him with intent.

“Armie loves you very much,” Elizabeth tells him.

Timothée laughs, a little breathlessly. “I don’t know why,” he says, annoyed at how petulant he sounds. He’s self-deprecating at the best of times; this is sheer pessimism.

“You’re very easy to love,” Elizabeth says, and he makes the mistake of shifting back, letting her catch his eye all of a sudden. “Surely you must know that?”

He doesn’t. He doesn’t know what Armie sees in him: skinny, lanky, ill at ease, too pale, too inexperienced, a decade too young, and nothing at all like his picture-perfect wife. He begs nightly for a speck of her confidence. Armie and Elizabeth were fated; he and Timothée were merely thrown together by chance and circumstance. Peers, colleagues; an office affair.

“Shush now,” Elizabeth tuts.

“I’m saying nothing!”

“I can hear you over-thinking. Come on. Tell me what you want from Bird, I’ll have them prep it. In, out, back on your way to New York.”

She doesn’t say _back home._

He’s always felt like he’s arriving, when he goes to New York. But all Timothée feels now is like he’s--

Leaving.

 

 

 

**ii.**

Toronto is a whirligig. One face to the next, never long enough to remember a name, repeated questions, deja-vu, the shutter of cameras like cicadas on a June night, flashes, trying not to blink; and Armie, a sturdy constant by his side, his wide hand never far from Timothée’s waist, his voice the most familiar sound in any room.

It’s always weird and wonderful to see Luca, never moreso than in this stark Canadian city, straight roads and tall buildings, where he is a wandering dream, ambled across the ocean from small-town Italy. Luca has the air of a man slightly lost, and not at all bothered about it. “You look so healthy, Tim, no?” he says, embracing them both like brothers, old friends. “He doesn’t look good?”

“Glowing,” Armie agrees. He has some of Luca’s sparkle in his eye.

Their hotel suites are across the corridor from each other, and as soon as the hallway is quiet each night, Armie scoots across, knocks softly. They stay up for hours, no matter how tired Timothée is. Talking, joking, kissing, gasping. He manages to find _Mirror, Mirror_ on pay-per-view and tortures Armie with it, darting around the room holding the remote aloft, as though Armie couldn’t easily pin him and pluck it from his hands. Armie knows all his weak spots, where the lightest brush of his fingertips will send Timothée into spasms, and he wields that power often, thoroughly, laughing all the while.

Exhaustion always hits fast. No energy for showering in the wee hours, just tugging each other’s clothes off and flopping into bed. Once they start touching, they can never seem to stop. Armie’s fingers working between Timothée’s, or their thighs pressed against each other, or a more holistic intimacy, mouths on each other, skin on skin all the way down to their feet.

There is a brief stumble, after Toronto. Nothing much. Just Timothée’s quiet, pained realisation that even a week without Armie is rough now. He’d thought it wouldn’t get that bad. They talk, the phone passed around on Armie’s end between him, Liz, Harper, a snuffling bark that Timothée assumes is Archie, and Ford’s thrilled burbling.

He’d never found silence a particular challenge, growing up; no need for constant stimulation.

Putting the phone down, after a dozen goodbyes, and casting himself into abject quiet makes Timothée suddenly feel really fucking awful.

And then back, the motor revving up again, noisy and bright in New York, brighter than it’s ever seemed before: Armie - always tactile - grown handsier than ever by their brief separation. He’s bold, his palm on Timothée’s stomach in full view of the cameras, hugs, genuine, full-body embraces, not a care in the world.

Timothée’s city, Timothée’s boyfriend. Home and _home_.

“What’s up with you?” Timothée asks breathlessly, when they have a second alone. It’s not an accusation, not at all: Armie’s joy is epidemically infectious.

“You idiot,” Armie huffs. He doesn’t even bother to glance aside, check their privacy, just leans in for a kiss that leaves Timothée’s lips tingling. “You didn’t miss me, like, even a little?”

“Don’t joke about that,” Timothée mumbles.

“I have very little willpower,” Armie says blithely. “I wanna touch you so I gotta touch you.”

It riles Timothée up, in a way that he doesn’t at all dislike. He’s always considered himself too shy to be horny: someone who asks, _is this okay?_ before every kiss, before touching a three-month girlfriend’s breast, before he puts his tongue against the head of Armie’s dick, looking up through his eyelashes at Armie’s flushed chest and _are-you-kidding-me_ smile. Even when they spent days in Crema where they’d undress on set and stay bare all day, only throwing on a pair of shorts for lunch, Timothée had never been actively turned on; or if he had, blamed it on Elio. Half-hard by proxy.

But having Armie paw over him delightedly - him, _him_ \- all the day through, makes Timothée consider a grocery store dash for lube. Embarrassment halts him in his tracks, and he asks Armie later, “I wanna--I mean, can we--? I haven’t got anything to--”, hoping Armie can decipher his morse code speech: stop-start, stop-stop-start.

“C’mon,” Armie smiles, tugging him into the bathroom. They waste water kissing under the shower, even more when Armie wraps his hand around them both and brings them off with none of the urgency Timothée’s desperate for. He can’t help but cant his hips up when he’s close, rocking little thrusts that feel too needy, too pitiful, but Armie just lets his grip grasp tighter and kisses Timothée’s neck until he comes, open-mouthed, panting. The air is thick with condensation, only pockets of air, and it makes Timothée’s throat feel claggy in the same way it does when he’s about to cry.

“Don’t go again,” he manages, apropos of nothing. He hates how much saying it makes it real.

“I won’t,” Armie replies anyway, as if he’d made any sense at all. Pushes his cheek against Timothée’s temple and rocks into him until he groans out his orgasm, low and earthy, his breath hotter than the steamy air against Timothée’s ear.

It’s even worse to feign a breezy goodbye this time. Not a mutual parting of ways; Timothée’s supposedly already home. He just has to watch Armie go. Not even back to LA, just squeezing in another week on set in Montreal.

He manages to last an hour before he messages Elizabeth.

_How do you say goodbye every time?_

Feels childish and surly for another ten minutes before he whispers _fuck it_ , and hits send.

He knows she’s never far from her phone, and her reply, as always, seems too wise.

_Because we know he’ll come back. x_

*

And then London comes like the eye of a storm.

Timothée knows cities, but he’s never known a city like this. The streets are too tightly packed, a wending doodle on a map, building work on every street corner as though you could come back in six months and find everything changed, the rug pulled out from under your feet. Ancient brickwork cosies up to gleaming glass buildings, the old leaning exhausted against the new as though tired by the pace of it all. He likes the familiar shadows, the scale of everything, the constant jarr of traffic, both cars and people shouting, honking, busking, bustling, everyone with somewhere to go, no space for dawdlers; but he doesn’t know the lay of the land well enough to feel comfortable striding alongside the masses. He sticks out, in his unease, like a sore thumb.

The sky in LA feels miles high, and even in New York it manages to struggle above the rooftops; here it’s a low blanket, grey and oppressive. There’s an immutable dirt in the air that could be centuries old. Timothée feels like he’s breathing in the ashes of everyone who’s ever been gobbled up by this old behemoth of a town.

Armie and Liz had waxed lyrical about London to him, back when it was a distant dream. Armie easily reeled off seven restaurants he wanted to take Timothée to on their three-day stint, not counting the cafes, the pubs, whatever might be tickling foodie London’s fickle fancy in pop-ups and market stalls. They bounced storybook names off each other - Kensington, Westminster, Fitzrovia, Clerkenwell - told in-joke anecdotes about a flustered northern bartender they’d had in Dalston, new to London and not yet used to famous faces; about Armie being too tall for the low, old doorways in Liberty’s and Harper bawling in the Tower of London because she thought she could try on the Queen’s hat.

Timothée wants the city to woo him, like it somehow managed to seduce them, and if it can’t, then at least Armie can show him a good time.

But Armie’s--

This is why it feels like the eye of whatever whirlwind they’ve been subsisting in the past few weeks. Calm, ominous. A looming threat.

Armie seems--

Distant.

He’s right there, of course. His arm slung, as ever, on Timothée’s slouched shoulders, wide grin, easy jokes. But it feels like his gaze is always sliding just past Timothée’s, caught, instead, as though a thought has just occurred to him every time Timothée tries to meet his eye.

Armie usually dumps his toothbrush right next to Timothée’s sink, even if he leaves his bags in his own hotel room; a half-assed pretence that they’ll sleep apart. He’ll steal nespresso pods and brown sugar from his bedside and pile them up next to Timothée’s coffee machine, prepped for an early morning. But here, in their grand old London hotel, uniformed doorman who greets them both _sir_ , doffing his cap - here, Armie leaves everything partitioned. Doesn’t even poke his head into Timothée’s room to check which of them has the better view.

Timothée whiles away half an hour on Instagram, lying on his neat bed with his boots still tied.

By the time Armie raps on his door, he seems focussed again. His gaze no longer slippery; just direct, meeting Timothée’s eyes once more, his smile radiant.

Timothée can’t help the quirk of his lips, smiling back. “You look like a man with a plan,” he says, pocketing his phone.

“Dinner,” Armie announces, his mind never too far from food.

“Meat?”

“Meat. Duh. But like, _roasted._ ”

Timothée knows they have a good half day free the next morning, before the usual press circus: a small room, uncomfortable chairs, a parade of faces, smiling for the camera. “And tomorrow?”

Immediately, Armie’s smile hardens, like he’s holding it in place. He scratches the buzzed hair at the back of his neck, shrugs. “I got a few errands to run. People I said I’d catch up with while I was in town.”

“It’s cool,” Timothée says, almost before Armie’s finished speaking.

“It’s cool?”

“Yeah,” Timothée shrugs. “Tell me where to hit up, in the morning, maybe.”

“Right,” Armie replies, relaxing again. They’re alone in the long, beige corridor, and he leans in for a darting kiss but doesn’t quite hit his mark, his lips awkward on the side of Timothée’s mouth. It makes him laugh, a snorting breath against Timothée’s cheek, but he doesn’t correct his kiss. Leaves it there, mismatched.

It’s the first time they’ve kissed in London, Timothée thinks absently.

*

It takes Armie a full hour to join Timothée in bed that night. He almost dozes off, jerks blearily awake to Armie’s bare arms slipping around his waist, a whispered apology, a soft kiss behind his left ear. Half-asleep, he drifts easily back down, anchored.

Armie’s already gone by the time he wakes up to the traffic and birdsong.

The dip in the mattress beside him, the rumpled duvet, isn’t even warm anymore. He’s long since left.

There’s a note on the pillow,  the hotel’s thick, cream, headed paper, and he can recognise Armie’s scratchy handwriting. But he doesn’t read it. Not yet. There’s something like fear seeping into his marrow. That old nauseous stage fright from back at LaGuardia that he used to wander around the grounds to shake off. He sets the espresso machine brewing, and walks in long strides around the room, sidled up to the wall, while it pours, spluttering, and cools a little. He drinks it like Luca taught him, skimming the crema with his fingertip and sucking it clean; sipping the coffee, never gulping. More bitter than Luca’s fresh grind, of course. Disappointing.

He showers, towel-dries his hair, thinks about shaving. Can’t be bothered with that level of precision. Moves Armie’s note without reading it so he can drape a towel over the pillows, lie with his knees up and his phone five inches from his nose; emails his parents, his sister, Selena; ignores messages from his agent, guiltily; browses his Twitter.

All the while, Timothée tries to think what he’s done wrong.

He’s always quietly assumed blame. Admitted tearily when he hit his sister too hard, as a kid, nodded when he was told he didn’t know his own strength. A bad liar, worse at omitting truths, a poor secret keeper. He talks little to save himself from talking too much. He thought he and Armie were pretty open with each other, an honesty that kept them friends and nudged them into something more.

But all he can come up with, to explain this sudden arm’s length gap between them, is his having elbowed his way into Armie’s life. Too much, too soon. A level of comfort and familiarity with Armie’s family that he shouldn’t have taken for granted.

Mostly he texts Elizabeth when he feels like this; when he feels shit. But it doesn’t seem appropriate. He even thinks about calling Luca, who, in his own wily way, seems to know Armie the best of all of them. But Luca’s a busy man these days. In demand.

Timothée lets his phone clatter, muffled, onto the carpet. Lets his arm dangle over the side of the bed. Then he inhales through his nose until his chest feels too full, holds it to let the pressure turn painful, then sighs it all out in one gushing breath, open-mouthed, a frantic release.

He grabs Armie’s note.

Totally innocuous. What the hell did Timothée expect?

 

_didn’t want to wake you! try these:_

_soho_

_monmouth - best coffee???_

_~~kew gardens~~ _ _too far ignore me_

_southbank (brutal!!!)_

_nat. gallery if you’re feeling fancy_

 

And then he’s signed his full name below with an addendum to sell it to autograph hunters if Timmy’s ever short of cash.

“Fuck,” Timothée whispers. His hands are just about shaking. It takes him three tries and some atrocious autocorrect to text Armie a single word: _“brutal”?_

The reply is instant.

_like, you know. brutalist architecture. everyone fucking loves concrete, right?_

And then, only a second later:

_really sorry i missed you this a.m. dinner?_

They’ll see each other long before then, so it’s moot to agree. But Timothée replies in the affirmative anyway. Shoves his phone in one pocket and Armie’s crumpled note in the other. Lies in bed, his eyes purposefully closed, his mind purposefully blank, until his fingers stop their trembling twitch.

*

Everything in London is desaturated. Even on a rough day, the East River has a hint of teal to it, but the Thames seems flat and murky, an ugly wet slap as it licks desperately at the low river walls; those, too, unkempt and gloopy, melting under a sheen of dirty greyish-green. Bridges that should be metallic white are a few shades off, pelted by the city’s endless smog. Tourists take photos of the gloom, stretching from Parliament down to the spire of St. Paul’s - a walking route Armie had recommended him weeks back that Timothée feels too churlish to follow now - ignoring buskers, painters, beggars. Timothée keeps his hands deep in his pockets, and his hood up over his Knicks cap.

Armie was right: he does like the brutality of the Thames’ south-side. Ostensibly built for the arts, it looks more like an awkward tumble of blocky cement, warehouses and prison wards, a world away from the Guggenheim’s pearly shell or the MOMA’s endless mirrors. It would all look wrong against a clear blue sky. Timothée wishes it were raining. That would show it off best of all, dabs of stone darkening as the water tripped and fell.

Overcast will do.

He sits for a long time with his legs hanging over the edge of the skate park. With his back to the city, he could be back in New York: graffiti tagged wildly over every wall, the clatter of boards and wheels, the muted cheer of a trick well played. He takes a photo, and sends it to Armie, then immediately feels stupid.

Armie wanted to get away from him for the day, right?

But quick as a flash comes the answering snapshot: a wide, rounded junction, double-decker buses and all, covered in obnoxious screens - Coca-Cola, the Gap, McDonald’s. He’s seen it in a hundred films and can’t think to name it. No wi-fi around to look it up, or map how far away from him Armie is right now. They could be miles apart. Or he could be just around the corner, close enough to hang out and choosing not to.

Timothée wanders on. Buys hot tea to warm his hands and a paper cone full of candied almonds, same as he could get from any stand on the outskirts of Central Park. He finds a theatre, upright and concrete like everything else, and darts inside, inexorably drawn. Flicks through a programme for _Follies_ , wanders around the foyer among the early birds, here for the afternoon matinee.

On, further on. He takes the back streets and passes a crumbling brick facade, darted with neon lights; tiny boutiques of handmade jewellery; street artists carving up the sidewalk with chalk, universally ignored. He stumbles, by accident, on the Globe, that Mecca of theatre kids across the world, and remembers the richer students in his classes bragging about having seen Brannagh or McKellen tread the boards here.

It’s a fake, Timothée knows. The original burned down centuries back.

He doesn’t go in. Spins on his heel as though his body is a compass. He feels too listless to even pick a direction. Stands for a long time looking out at the water, at everything this strange, cluttered city has to offer.

And then heads, feet dragging, back towards the hotel to wait, alone, for Armie.

*

That nebulous terror solidifies into a cruel tumour far quicker than Timothée would’ve liked. He’s had gut-deep disappointments before, and they always start the same way: an antsy, persistent anxiety that he’s flubbed an audition, insulted a girlfriend, failed in some way he can’t pinpoint. It’s been low and bubbling in his belly ever since they arrived in London, and back at the hotel, it boils over.

Mr Hammer, he’s told, has already returned, and Timothée launches himself up the stairs two at a time, veering straight to Armie’s room rather than his own. The corridor is quiet enough that he can hear the murmur of Armie’s deep voice even half way down, and he slows, not wanting to interrupt. But no other voice comes. Just Armie; an intent phone call. Timothée doesn’t even need to put his ear to the door to hear it. He’d never eavesdrop on purpose. But he can hear, pretty clear through the old wood, every word Armie’s saying.

_No, tomorrow. Right. Right! I was pissed. I’ll have to--yeah. Yeah, I know. Liz, I’m not--Okay. Okay._

_...Okay. No, I don’t think he knows anything. Yeah. It feels like it’s just dragging out now. No, I’m not worried. He’s gonna--I’m not worried. Liz. Liz! Liz. Let me talk. Okay, just--_

_Okay. Yes. Love you too. Yes. Tomorrow. Love you. Bye bye bye bye--_

Timothée’s heart thuds so violently it feels like a right hook behind his ribcage, strong enough to break bones. He doesn’t knock. He doesn’t do anything. Just stands there, feeling small and gaunt and ill-formed, long limbs he never grew into no matter how awkward his puberty felt, scraggly hair he can’t tame, sullen cheekbones, thin lips. Aware of his body in a way that feels like he’s outside of it; aware of every tense muscle he can’t unclench.

If he focuses on his body, he thinks, then his mind won’t go wild. He won’t pore over every word he wasn’t meant to hear.

Slowly, as though navigating a minefield, he backs up the corridor and finds his room. Fumbles with the keycard. The sheets have been changed and turned down for the night already. Coffee restocked, a jug of water and lemon on his bedside table. Everything else where he left it: his overnight satchel kicked under the desk, a t-shirt thrown over the back of a chair, the Vonnegut book he’s half reading folded open, face down.

All of those things will still be there tomorrow, Timothée thinks, on the day when Armie’s going to break up with him.

Because that’s what--

That’s what will happen, he reasons dully. Of course.

 _It’s just dragging out now_.

It makes sense, if he thinks rationally. A fast-burning fling that has every right to fizzle out just as startlingly as it began. Once Armie had the space and distance to take stock of what he already has. Timothée as useful as a third eye: seemingly cool, at first, maybe thrilling, but just ends up blurring everything that should have been in focus.

He doesn’t move again, for a really long time. And then, slowly, Timothée climbs onto the bed, and lies, face-down, his palms by the side of his head, his fingers outstretched on the pillow, and holds his breath until he can convince himself that’s the reason his chest aches and aches and aches.

*

He forces himself into pragmatism to get through the day.

Interview after interview gives him an excuse for weariness, for sinking into easy distraction. Armie, too, is still perturbed in some implacable way; understandable, Timothée thinks unhappily. Every now and then they hit on a stupid shared story, an anecdote that hasn’t passed through Timothée’s mind in months, and he turns in a flash to find Armie already facing him, his spark of a grin, his avid hands gesticulating madly as they tell their garbled story. And then Timothée sinks back into his chair again. Tries to keep ahold of his smile. Tries to engage.

Luca orbits around through the day, a comforting satellite, dipping in and out of interviews as he sees fit. He brings them both cold water in paper cups as though it’s a magnanimous gesture - in truth, Timothée’s more grateful than he knows - and negotiates jovially to get them a half hour break. Afternoon tea, he calls it. Coffee and a pastry. He’s very good, Luca, at getting his way and making it seem like it was your call all along.

Timothée only means to fetch his jacket. He left it in the conference room, swapped out by his stylist for a cosier sweater. A quick dash and then back into the fray.

But when he comes back, starving and ready to go, Armie and Luca are standing close, their heads bent together in low conversation. Whispering, privately, but not so silently that Timothée can’t hear. He should bust in, he thinks frantically, announce his presence. But instead he freezes.

“It will be difficult,” Luca’s murmuring, and Armie nods, intent.

“But worth it? In the long run?” He sounds serious, a rare and unflattering tone for him.

Luca seems to consider this a long time, like he does with everything. There are no quick answers for Luca. “--I think, yes. I think, for you. For all of you, perhaps.”

If Timothée steps forward now, they’ll know he was there. Listening. So instead, in a kind of thrumming panic, he spins on his heel, fast, takes two strides back, and then comes into the room again like he’s none the wiser. That wooden smile fixed on his face.

Some actor, he thinks. Jeez.

Coffee. Cinammon buns, dark rye, Scandi and warm. Timothée wishes desperately the day was over and is allowed to be honest, aloud, about that much. In the cafe’s cramped bathroom, he stays too long, sitting on the closed toilet seat, breathing hard through his nose until the rise and fall of his chest feels steady and under control.

This is the last time he’s going to be with Armie, really _be_ with him, he thinks, and he’s wasting it talking drivel with people he’ll never meet again for magazines he’ll never read. “Fuck,” Timothée lets himself whisper. “ _Fuck._ ”

Back to it. He hopes his self-effacing pessimism is somehow endearing. If Armie notices, there’s barely a chance to acknowledge it. They’re only alone for a split second, between camera setups, and Armie grabs Timothée’s hand, squeezes it, squashing his long fingers together. “Keep on keeping on,” he whispers. It’s something he’s said more than once this year, and it always seemed encouraging before. A call to arms. Now it just feels like Armie’s preparing him. Life goes on. Plenty more fish in the sea.

“Do you--” Timothée starts, carefully, not wanting to overstep. “--still want to get dinner?”

“Shit,” Armie hisses, rolling his eyes, like it was the last thing on his mind. “They messed me around with the booking and I forgot--I forgot to say. Damn it. Tomorrow, we’ve got a table booked for tomorrow, I swear.” He huffs out a little, angry breath, then smiles, like his frustration’s smoothed over instantly. “Sky Garden at eight. The restaurant, not, like, the bar. I already know I’m having the halibut.”

Timothée shrugs, nods. He supposes they will never make it to that dinner, tomorrow. Evasive tactics. “You wanna get takeout tonight? My room?” He says it before he even considers whether he wants to hear the answer. A simple, cutting negative. He’s given Armie such an easy opt-out.

Luca taught them both far too well how to gauge each other’s honesty. How to read the minutest details, microexpressions, the truth behind the sheen of the eyes, the quirk of a lip, the slightest inhale, and what it all might add up to. Timothée knows that Armie rubs the back of his neck when he’s shy, to deter people from looking him directly in the eye. He knows that Armie needs to keep his hands busy, most of all when there’s silence. Once, when Armie was feeling obnoxiously romantic, bare-skinned and bare-souled, he ran his fingers over Timothée’s lips and said his favourite thing was when Timmy laughed so full-heartedly you could see all his teeth, top and bottom, and right to the back of his gammy tongue. “Don’t you dare be embarrassed about it,” he’d grinned.

Suffice to say, they knew each other’s tells.

Timothée asks the simplest question, needing only a breezy _yeah_ or _nah_ , and still sees Armie’s eyes flicker, infinitesimally, running through a whole gamut of answers and excuses.

 _Oh,_ Timothée thinks. He feels--heavy. Like his body weighs twice as much as it should. More pressure for every millisecond Armie takes to reply.

“Sounds good, man,” is what Armie gives him in the end. A smile that doesn’t go any further than his mouth.

Timothée smiles back, and doesn’t feel it in his eyes either.

*

Last time they had takeout, it was Chinese at the Hammer house, Tso’s chicken, oily lo mein and wonton soup that Armie slurped obnoxiously through his teeth. Timothée spent half his childhood in New York, and was by far the best of the three of them with chopsticks, so Armie, far too playful, tapped his cheek and opened his mouth, gaping, waiting to be fed. Chewed noisily, made sure Timothée could see all the orangey, masticated pulp in his mouth.

“Gross,” Timothée had said. A term of endearment. He would have kissed Armie even like that, childish and vile. (Armie did kiss him, later, and kissed Elizabeth too, and it was Liz who slapped him mildly on the jaw and told him to go brush his teeth. When he kissed them both next, he was minty and clean. Generous with his tongue.)

“Now me,” Elizabeth had said, laughing, and she lent across, with her palm on Timothée’s knee, while he held his hand under the noodles to keep them from dripping on her skirt.

It wasn’t a thing, at the time. In hindsight, it feels shockingly intimate. Hand-feeding Armie’s _wife_ . Timothée’s stomach twists at his audacity. Of course none of this can fly anymore. Of _course._

Tonight it’s fish and chips - _chips_ , Armie says, not fries, nobody could ever call these fat-cut beauties fries - vinegary and hot, snuck into the hotel in the nook of Armie’s elbow. They eat with their hands, even the fish, still steaming as they crack open the thick batter, and the room will smell of malt and seafood for days after Timothée’s left.

He wants there to be an awkwardness between them. A clear line between then and now. A list of rules of everything that might have once seemed above board but would soon be a faux pas: calling Liz without reason. Touching below Armie’s waist in public. Thinking of himself, even absent-mindedly, as Armie’s partner; lover; boyfriend.

But instead Armie is tired and affectionate, happy to lie with a full belly and Timothée by his side, talking quietly about London, about its ugly charm, about how goddamn crazy it is that this thing they made together a year or more back is finally coming into the world, for real, for really real, for everyone to see. “It fucking terrifies me,” Armie admits, his hand rubbing absently along Timothée’s bare arm. “To have everyone look at you the same way I do, you know?”

Timothée shrugs. He doesn’t know, not anymore.

Armie frowns at him, a flickering spectrum of emotion behind his eyes that makes Timothée glance away in case he sees something too finite. “Hey,” Armie murmurs, “hey, hey—” and he sits up slowly, leans over slower still, his long arms wrapping around Timothée’s skinny chest. Timothée can’t help but bury his nose and mouth in Armie’s sweater, worn all day, soft and scented with his sweat, his cologne, this damned city. He’s cuddling Armie like a child and doesn’t know how to stop.

“I thought—Jesus, I thought you were just jetlagged,” Armie mutters, quietly pissed off.

“I am,” Timothée mumbles. “I’m just tired.”

He wants this ease, suddenly desperate for it. A night without questions, just their hands on each other, to catalogue every part of Armie he took for granted in LA. The moles at the bottom of his spine, the blonde hair peppering his chest, the gangly awkwardness of his toes and feet, the valley of his muscular thighs. Timothée realises he knows it all already, but, suddenly a cartographer, wants to map Armie, commit him to both paper and memory; factual and emotional.

“Talk to me,” Armie murmurs, stroking Timothée’s hair, greasy from worry and a long day.

He doesn’t want to usher on the inevitable.

“Kiss me,” he says instead.

Armie’s phone buzzes in his back pocket.

He cusses, low and genuine. “I gotta take it—five seconds, I swear.” He does kiss Timothée, trite, fast, three times, then grabs his phone and shuts himself in the bathroom for a lick of privacy.

He’s never—

He’s never done that before. Always took his calls in Timothée’s arms back in LA, usually his publicist, agent, PR; Armie smothering his annoyance and pulling faces if he couldn’t be bothered to take the conversation seriously. Elizabeth always chastised him and never meant it. Timothée just laughed at his gurning.

Timothée flops back on the bed. He balls his hands into painful fists, and scrunches his knuckles against his shut eyes, grinding them against the jutting bone of his brow. He knows he’ll look bloodshot and teary if he does it for too long, so stops himself. Moves his arms away like he only has tentative control of them. Shoves his hands under his body, between his back and the mattress.

If he slows his breathing enough, ignores the rush of his blood in his ears and concentrates, he can hear Armie’s side of the conversation.

 _No. No, not tonight. He seems—I don’t know. Fragile. I have to do this right, Liz, not tonight. First thing tomorrow, I’ll—I know. I_ know. _I love you. I will. I gotta go._

He hears Armie put his phone down carefully on the marble counter top, and exhale a slow, long breath. Not quite a sigh, but something more grounding. Bracing himself. Timothée can’t help but echo him, his breath shaky, his throat sore.

And then Armie comes back into the room, and peels off his sweater on the way to the bed, and by the time he’s lifted it over his head, his smile is back and his eyes are soft, and he climbs in next to Timothée, hassling him fondly until they’re both naked and under the duvet, spooning, his hands on Timothée’s skinny stomach, pulling him close, closer still--and the thought dashes through Timothée’s mind that this is the final leg now, the bittersweet victory lap; a pity fuck, he thinks darkly. But Armie’s hands feel so warm and familiar on his skin. No different to how they ever feel. The same slight hardness of his fingertips, from his out-of-work guitar habit. The shock of how wide his hand-span is, when he spreads his fingers over Timothée’s belly. The way he can’t help but smooth his thumb back and forth, comforting, over the jut of Timothée’s hipbone.

“You didn’t kiss me yet,” Timothée whispers, even though it’s not strictly true. He’s aiming for a joke and pretty much misses. He just sounds desperate.

“You’re so right,” Armie murmurs back, and he leans up on his elbow, and tilts Timothée’s chin a little, and kisses him with his mouth already open. The weight of his tongue familiar too. Their lips barely touch. Just slick tongues against each other, soft moans, all wet and all lost.

The bitter punch of tears hit Timothée’s eyes and he breaks off fast, before he gives too much of himself away. Shifts his hips against Armie, reaches down between them and finds Armie’s cock, a little hard, and slides it between his thighs, as high up as he can, where his legs have a little meat on them.

“Can I fuck you like this?” Armie whispers, his voice a low pant.

“Yeah,” Timothée breathes, not reaching up to catch the saltwater gathering against the bridge of his nose. If he wipes his eyes it’ll give the whole game away.

Very softly, almost ghost-like, Armie kisses the back of his neck. It’s too intimate, and Timothée screws his eyes shut, desperate not to cry. He’s always felt too much, too openly, and hates himself for it in this moment. It’s so easy to pretend to feel someone else’s emotions, and so damn hard to cover up his own.

“Talk to me?” Armie whispers, far too late.

“Tomorrow--” Timothée tells him, canting his hips back.

They’ll talk tomorrow.

*

The second morning in a row, Timothée wakes up alone.

A hastily written text from twenty minutes ago - _back soon, an hour tops i stg, i’ll bring real coffee -_ and Armie’s shoes, jeans, jacket all gone.

Anticipation has always messed him up. When he was a kid, he made his Mom yank out his baby teeth as soon as they were loose enough, every time, just because he loathed waiting for them to drop. He’d always been unhappily giddy after each audition, waiting for a call back; the longer the wait, the worse his jitters became, restless and hyperactive, wandering the house with his fingertips running along the walls to try and find some ballast in reality. Even out in Crema, weeks before the shoot, waiting for Armie to join him, he sensed that unsettling fear that they might be a poor match, clashing colours, unable to sell something as earnest as true love.

Armie had sprung up on him that very first day, no warning, just a grin and a handshake that turned easily into a hug.

He can’t bear another second in this empty hotel room, waiting for the inevitable.

So Timothée pulls on some clothes, finds his wallet and phone, and bails into the indifferent city.

The day is blustery, the edge of that dormant tempest that Timothée’s been aware of this whole trip just starting to creep down from the grey skies. London is never calm, but it’s quiet as a weekday will allow: clusters of tourists in Trafalgar Square, traffic without the rush-hour urgency, an old busker nestling between theatres, playing a mournful violin dirge for passers-by. He barely has anything in his open violin case, and Timothée stops to listen for a while, his eyes closed, and drops a ten pound note in amongst the small change when he finishes the final wavering note.

The old man nods in gratitude, and Timothée walks on, guiltless.

He wanders through an open archway, unpretty in a regal sort of way, the pale brick dusted by the same grit that masks the whole city, and comes out onto a long, yawning promenade, tree-lined all the way down, the first straight road he’s seen in days. There’s a sprawling parkland on one side, and the further he ambles in, the more rootless he feels: cars fading into silence, the only sounds soft conversation between retired couples, the springy pad of a mid-morning jogger, irritable swans and the speckled splash of a distant fountain. St James’, his phone informs him. A cousin of Central Park half way across the world. The distant mansion he could see at the end of that vast red-brick road was a palace, _the_ palace.

He doesn’t bother to wander up that way. Sticks to the grassland. Watches his feet as he walks, the way the untouched dew clings to his boots.

Timothée feels clear-headed out here, calmer than he has in days. Life happened before Armie; it’ll go on after him, too.

It’ll be okay.

He whispers it - _it’ll be okay_ \- as if saying it aloud makes it true.

His phone buzzes, unwelcome, in his back pocket. He thinks about ignoring it, rolls his eyes at the implication he could, and then fishes it out.

_where are you????_

Timothée looks up for a landmark. _St James’ Park. There’s a cottage here. Weird._

_don’t go anywhere_

Timothée scoffs, a bitter sort of laugh. Here it is, then. The beginning of the end. Or, he supposes, the ending of the end. It began a long time ago. He can picture it, between New York and London, between Armie’s handsy affection and his odd, uncertain distance: he and Liz, a difficult conversation, an acknowledgement that this is all a little bit louche for a family man. Best to nip it in the bud before it becomes a scandal. “Let him down gently,” he imagines Liz saying. She’s always looked out for him; for them both.

He can imagine exactly what Armie will say to him, too. Knows him more than well enough for that by now. Timothée wanders aimlessly towards the dainty house - it really does look like a cottage plucked carefully from the English countryside and set down in the middle of the city, surrounded by rows of vegetables and flowerbeds, a trickling pond under the little lovers’ bridge that spans the five steps between the house and its tiny annex - and thinks about how Armie looks when he’s resigned to brutal honesty. That awkward sadness in his eyes, the way his features seem to droop, as if he has no stamina to keep up a single pretence. _I really do care about you,_  he’ll say. _You’re one of my best goddamn friends in the whole world,_ he’ll say.

 _I don’t think we can do this anymore_ , he’ll say.

Timothée drags his feet as he walks. Makes his way up to the hump of the creaky bridge. There’s a layer of copper pennies under the greenish water, a pile of long-forgotten wishes. He leans his chin on the wooden railing, and glances out from under his unruly fringe at the empty, overcast park. The wind is just beginning to rattle the bushes as they hunker down for the start of winter. An unwelcome shudder runs through him, not because it’s cold, but just because: as though his body’s trying to shake out all the anxiety of the past few days.

At least it’s almost over now.

He isn’t sure how long he stays there. His back is sore and his hands are catching the chill. Timothée tucks his palms inside the sleeves of his hoodie. When he finally catches sight of Armie jogging, lumbering, along the pebbled pathway, his neck cracks and his thighs complain as he stands up straight. Armie always looks ungainly when he runs, his legs too long, his cheeks flushed even though he’s fit as hell. It makes Timothée smile against his will.

“I told you to stick around, asshole,” Armie shouts at him from across the pond. He’s not angry, he’s smiling too. He sounds like he’s been running through the whole park to find this place.

“Needed some air,” Timothée shrugs. His feet refuse to move him. If he stays here, on the bridge, in this chilly, ageless archway, maybe time will freeze up. A dead halt.

Guileless, Armie walks over, slow, catching his breath.

“Stop,” Timothée whispers, before he can help himself.

Armie looks far too quizzical, and it feels like an act. “Huh?”

“Stop,” Timothée says again, meaning it this time. Jesus. Jesus, it’s all going to come out. “Stop, just. Look, I know you--”

He closes his eyes. Exhales to clear his lungs, breathes, tries again. “I know what the deal is, okay? And you’re--you’re a nice guy, you don’t want to hurt me or whatever. But I’d rather you just--ripped off the bandaid now.”

Armie is looking at him like he’s never seen Timothée before. “--What?”

“Dude, it’s--” Again, that useless stop-start, he can’t help it. “It’s fine. You can break up with me. You’ve got a wife and kids and all I’m doing is--making things messy. I get it. I really get it.”

All of the colour has drained from Armie’s cheeks. He looks pale, sickly, unhandsome, and Timothée still wants to reach for his jaw and lay his hand against it, tell him it’s okay. He sticks his hands in his pockets so he won’t.

“Wait,” Armie says.

He swallows, his eyes darting all over Timothée’s face and neck, and then away, thinking frantically. Wondering what gave the game away, Timothée supposes.

“Wait--” Armie says again. Then: “Fuck. Oh my god. I fucked up.”

Immediately he puts his hand on Timothée’s arm like he’ll lose his balance if he doesn’t. And then he’s suddenly on the ground, and Timothée thinks he’s fallen, tries to grab for his shoulders, but he hasn’t, he’s upright, he’s just on his knees, all at once, scrambling for something in his jacket pocket, a litany of low swear-words streaming out from between his chapped lips.

“Christ, I’m, fuck, I’m sorry, I was trying to--Oh my god, I was trying to keep it on the downlow, I didn’t realise you thought I was--” He’s rambling, inane, too fast for Timothée to keep up, and there’s something in his hands that Timothée can’t figure out at all, and he’s not on his knees, actually, he’s just on one knee-- “It was meant to come in yesterday and it was late, Liz arranged everything and when I got to the fucking store it wasn’t ready, _fuck_ , I’ve just been--I was just there now, and I was gonna--tonight at the fucking, at the restaurant--”

Armie’s voice is shaking. It’s making his hands shake. And Timothée still doesn’t know what he’s talking about. What he’s doing. What he’s fumbling with in the palm of his outstretched hand.

“Timothée,” Armie breathes, finally pausing. “Timmy. I know you can’t--I know we can’t legally get married because of the whole I’ve-got-a-wife thing. But will you, like, hypothetically--would you marry me anyway?”

It’s a ring. In the box, in the palm of his hand. Armie’s on one knee, on this stupid little bridge in the middle of a fall wind in a park in London city, holding out a ring in front of Timothée.

“--What are you doing?” Timothée asks, his voice barely more than a whisper.

“I love you so fucking much,” Armie says, desperate, trying to keep his balance. “Liz loves you. We want--we want you in our lives.”

When Armie’s said his piece, everything falls incredibly silent. Timothée knows, rationally, that the wind is still blowing, from the erratic sway of the trees, the ripples on the pond’s shallow surface; but he can’t hear it. Can’t hear anything but his own pulse and Armie’s steady, patient breath.

His throat feels arid and his eyes are hot and wet. He knows he’s staring at the ring but he still can’t quite see it, a glinting blur in Armie’s hands.

“I thought--” he says, swallowing, with difficulty. He tries to reconcile this with everything he thought he knew the past few days: private snatches of conversation, Armie seeking abject reassurance, his to-and-fro-ing, something kept secret, hoarded, until the moment was right.

“I’m a fucking idiot,” Timothée manages, dizzy.

“Hard same,” Armie says, his voice thick, breaking into a watery grin.

“What happens if I say yes?”

“I mean I’ll--put the ring on you, and try not to fall over when I get up, and then we’ll just carry on? Like we are? Me and you and Liz?”

“Yes.”

Armie sucks in a worried breath. “Yes like, you’re agreeing that’s what will happen or yes like _yes_?”

“Yes,” Timothée says, because he can’t say anything else.

“--Yes,” Armie agrees, so faint.

And, ever so slightly shaking, he takes the ring out of its little black Cartier box, and reaches for Timothée’s hand, and pulls back the sleeve of his hoodie, and slides the ring all the way down his third finger, right where it belongs.

“This isn’t how I thought today would go,” Timothée says, a bubble of laughter catching in his still-dry throat.

Armie rolls his eyes, clambering up and immediately pulling Timothée towards him, both of them sagging into each other, tangible relief. “I mean, I know I fucked it up, but that was kind of the idea.”

They don’t let go. For so long that the wind dies down and the treetops settle and the water stills. They could be anywhere and nowhere.

They don’t let each other go.

 

 

**iii.**

It feels like the seven hundredth red carpet they’ve walked for this movie, and it’s only just now premiering in the US, in Los Angeles, finally, _finally_. Timothée wishes the whole shebang wasn’t so rote by now - hand around Armie’s waist, smile for the camera, say a few humbled words - because he’s genuinely psyched to be here, in Armie’s city, showing him off to the world.

There’s no point getting ready anywhere else but Armie’s house. Timothée still has clean socks and boxers folded neatly in a drawer, from back in midsummer, and Elizabeth brings him a pile to choose from; puts  the leftovers, without fanfare, in the master dresser, next to Armie’s underthings. Her vanity is a mess of cords and makeup, flat iron for her roots and curlers for the rest, and Armie’s lying in bed not bothering to dress until the last possible second.

It feels like they’re getting ready for prom. Disorganised and jittery. A flushed excitement in the air.

“C’mere,” Armie says, reaching his hands out for Timothée. He can’t be assed to get up, but he wants to button Timothée’s shirt, and wrangles Timothée down beside him, even though it’ll crumple his starched Berluti.

Turns out it’s an excuse to kiss him. Timothée’s hair is so long and unruly by now that Armie can dig his hands into it for as long as he likes, and nobody can tell the difference. He just looks unkempt by choice, a certain style.

“Stop fiddling,” Armie grins against his lips.

It’s been weeks, but whenever Timothée’s right hand is free, he finds it drawn to the ring.

He’s gotten used to the weight of it by now. It was odd at first, a sudden addition that he seemed constantly aware of. Not a great mass, delicate enough, but the significance of it. He likes to rub his thumb over the underside, feeling the three intertwined bands, or slide it back and forth around his skin, looking at the pale indentation it’s already made on his ring finger.

“Where did you find a ring that’s like--so specifically for three people?” Timothée wonders aloud. “Utah?”

“Tut _tut,_ Timothée,” Armie says, mock-scandalised. “Was that a Mormon joke?”

“I did all the leg work,” Elizabeth says firmly, “And don’t let him tell you otherwise. I can’t tell you all the dour silver bands he was looking at.”

Armie holds his hands up, as if to admit defeat, and Timothée laughs. He likes that whenever one of them laughs, it acts as a catalyst: smiles all round.

“You think I should take it off, for tonight?” Timothée says, not meaning that much by it, not really, but Armie jerks back, sits up suddenly. Elizabeth, too, turns to look at them, concerned.

“What?”

“I mean--” Timothée struggles. “I mean it’s really--obvious. You aren’t--worried?”

“That’s kind of the whole point, my darling,” Elizabeth says softly, just to Timothée, waving her own hand: the glinting engagement ring, the complimentary wedding band. Not a sign of ownership, nothing so crass, but a symbol. A promise.

“People will look.”

“Let them look,” Armie murmurs, his fingertips trailing along Timothée’s jaw, all the way down his neck, his arm, down to his hands; he brings Timothée’s knuckles up to his mouth and kisses him chastely. Licks messily all over the back of his palm as if to diffuse how earnest he feels.

“Let them look,” Timothée agrees, a little nervous.

A little nervous, yes, but without regret.

Armie and Elizabeth will be at his side, after all.

****

**fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> [duck island cottage](http://www.londongardenstrust.org/features/dicframe.htm).
> 
> [the ring](http://www.cartier.co.uk/en-gb/collections/jewelry/collections/jewelry-for-men/rings/b4052700-trinity-de-cartier-ring,-classic.html).
> 
> [illustrations by littledozerdraws](http://littledozerdraws.tumblr.com).


End file.
